In this message we shall continue to consider the Man-Savior’s incarnation fulfilling the purpose of God’s creation of man.
In the foregoing message we pointed out that God designed man to be one with Him. Because God designed man this way, He created man in His image and after His likeness. Image refers to the inward being, and likeness, to the outward appearance. Actually, God created man in His own image with the intention that man would be His duplication. Furthermore, for man to become a duplication of God, he must have the capacity to contain what God is. Therefore, man was made in God’s image to be His duplication and after His likeness to be His expression.
God’s purpose in creating man was that man would be His duplication in order to express Him. In order for this purpose to be carried out, it is necessary for man to receive God and contain Him as the tree of life. However, Adam, the man created by God, failed in God’s purpose and damaged God’s design. Thousands of years later, the Man-Savior came to fulfill God’s purpose in creating man.
Through the incarnation of Christ God in the Son became a man. What a great matter this is! God had created man with a purpose according to His design, but man failed Him in His purpose and destroyed His design. Instead of creating another man, God Himself came to be the second Man (1 Cor. 15:47). God came to be the second Man not in the Father nor in the Spirit but in the Son.
The New Testament way of speaking about the incarnation is to say that the Word, which is God, became flesh (John 1:1, 14) and that God was manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). Since the first man failed God in His purpose and ruined His design, God Himself came to be the second Man. Hallelujah for the second Man!
The Man-Savior as the second Man was not created; rather, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a human virgin. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit in order to have the essence of God, and He was born of a human virgin in order to have the human essence. Therefore, this Man was a composition of two essences, a composition of the divine essence and the human essence. Hence, He was the mingling of God with man. Because this wonderful One was a composition of two essences, the mingling of God with man, He was a God-man.
A crucial matter concerning the God-man is that He lived a human life filled with the divine life as its content. Contrary to what some may think, the Gospel of Luke is not merely a book of stories. This Gospel is a revelation of the God-man who lived a human life filled with the divine life as its content. As the One who lived such a life, the Man-Savior had the divine nature with the divine attributes, that is, with the divine love, light, righteousness, and holiness. The divine nature with its attributes was expressed in the Man-Savior’s human nature with all the human virtues.